A Don's Life

What's the problem? Nail technology or league tables?

I've heard quite enough about 'Mickey Mouse' qualifications today -- and what Mr Gove and his friends are doing to clean this little mess up. No longer will schools be able to count a BTEC in Fish Husbandry as the equivalent of 2 GCSEs. And you won't be able to count a Horse Care diploma, or Health and Social Care, as equal to 4 GCSEs. The same goes for Nail Technology . . . . I have to confess, I'm not quite sure what this is, how many kids ever took the subject, or how many GCSEs it counted as. Certainly not one of my own specialist subjects, as anyone who has ever looked at my nails will confirm.

The argument is clear. Schools were using these non-academic qualifications to scoop up GCSE equivalents, and so creep up the league tables . . . which was fine, except the pupils soon found that, when they went on the job market, fish husbandry didnt have quite the same selling value as History and French, or Physics and Chemistry.

True, I'm sure. But isn't the problem the league tables, not the subjects.

Which academics have turned down honours?

It's a dilemma which most of us aren't going to have to face. But I'm sure many of have enjoyed this particular "what if...." question.

"What if I was awarded an 'honour'...MBE? CBE? Knighthood? .... would I accept it?"

 Yes, because I would be dead chuffed, and an hour or two at Buckingham Palace would be fun (and it wold be nice to have something to put on instead of my Mum's old headgirl badge when the posh invite says "honours will be worn" ? Yes, because it is really a tribute to those I work with and my whole institution? (Never quite sure how much I believe that one?) No, because the whole parade is just a hangover from the days when we really did have the empire that most of these medals proclaim? No, because just look at the company I'd be keeping? And so on.

And then of course there is the question of Which Honour. I dont imagine that the OM has ever been turned down (only 25 of them at a time, and nicely discreet, with no imperial undertones)... But what about "Dame"? Useful presumably for getting upgraded on an airplane, but fancy actually living with a silly title like that. Imagine how embarrassing it would be coming over the tannoy at the dentists.

Anyway, when there was the razzmattazz earlier in the week about the celebs, writers and artists who had turned them down between 1951 and 1999 (Lucian Freud, Grahame Greene and co), I found myself wondering which academics had done the same.

The newspapers hadn't been quite as interested in the university refuseniks. But when I managed to get hold of the full list, it actually sprung a few surprises.

What's the price of cheap filming in Greece?

One piece of apparently good news is that the Greek authorities intend to reduce the price of filming on major Greek archaeological sites. You'll now be able to film on the Acropolis for a mere €1600 a day (down from €4000 in 2005, and a whole lot cheaper than the equivalent in (say) Italy).

This may be a false bargain for the film crews. I doubt if they can provide much practical support for that amount of money (the electricity, the guy with the keys etc.), and I strongly suspect that you won't get an exclusive on the Acropolis at that price. Go and try and make your movie and I bet you'll find another couple of film crews also on the job.

But there's worse. The Greeks are presumably aiming at 'big motion pictures'  or adverts (see the joke above) -- but for documentary filming there is more to these prices than just the cash.

Is Hockney any good?

Sometimes there are advantages to being married to an art historian. On Tuesday, it was going to the opening of the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy -- and exhibition of his recent landscapes (mostly of Yorkshire).

There had been loads of publicity, advance reviews and tv programmes about these pictures, and I hadn't much liked what I saw. Quick big stuff, I thought. And not actually very interesting (even if you are a fan of Yorkshire). In the event, I thought the show WAS much more impressive than I had expected (not sure if it was interesting). . . but that's another story.

The really amazing thing was the crowds of people. This was the opening (usually at the Royal Academy a fun, well-oiled but relatively demure occasion) and there were people queuing to get in right across the courtyard. When you got inside there were loads of photographers lined up the stairs, waiting for the celebs and ostentatiously not lifting their cameras for the likes of us (thank god).

So why the interest?

Leveson and Camillagate

I've just been reviewing a few books about the Queen (it being her diamond jubilee and a diamond quantity of books appearing to celebrate); and, as always, I've done way too much reading -- beyond and behind -- to get into the piece. In particular, I've been wondering how come we've all forgotten the Camillagate and the Squidgygate tapes.

Maybe these causes célèbres of the 1990s are now hardly a memory, but it's a bit odd that these bits of royal phone interception (if they were genuine) haven't played their parts in the Leveson Inquiry (unless I've missed it). Maybe that it because the conversations (between Di and J Gilbey, and Charles and Camilla) were apparently taped by amateur hackers -- or alternatively by the security services -- not by professional tabloid journalists (in this game, remember, "amateur" is always a bit of an alibi). Maybe it is all so long ago that most of us have forgotten.

I haven't forgotten.

Hatchet job of the year

I was chuffed earlier this week to find myself (or rather my review of Robert Hughes' book on Rome) on the shortlist for the "Hatchet job of the year" prize. Actually the name of the prize is a bit misleading. OK it's a good headline grabber -- and got hundreds more column inches than if it had been called "2011 Prize for Critical Journalism". But, as its manifesto makes clear, it's not actually a prize for skewering . . . it's for honest as well as entertaining book reviewing, that isn't afraid to go beyond deference, to call a spade a spade.

As far as my Rome review goes, I think I was just doing my job. I made it pretty clear that I am quite an admirer of Hughes, and loved his The Shock of the New. But the chapters of Rome that cover the ancient world (the bit I really know about) are so riddled with dreadful errors -- howler after howler -- that I had to speak up. The point of a review, after all, is that an informed critic should give an honest, professional evaluation of the . Many other books on the Hatchet shortlist are poetry or fiction, and there the nature of that evaluation is rather different. But in the case of Rome, it was facts pure and simple... mixing up BCE and CE, wrong dates, wrong names, all tumbling out one after the other...

I have never met Hughes, but if I were to have the pleasure, I would say just what I wrote to his face. And that has always been the ethical touchstone of a review. If you couldn't say it to the author, then it's a skewering, so don't.

King Georges leave the University Library

I have been in the University Library for the first time in weeks - and, when you have a day there (cuts or no cuts) you do still feel wonderfully grateful for the books they have -- mad though some of them may be. In fact I have spent a very happy day reading some really loony and interesting stuff on Cicero's De Haruspicum Responso, none of it available on line -- so thank you, book librarians one and all.

But it was only on the way out that I noticed that something was going on in the front hall. There were barriers round one of the King Georges -- the statues that stand in the entrance way, and look down upon you as you return your books. These guys have become my very favourite statues in Cambridge, George  the first and the second (one by Rysbrack, the other by Wilton): not just because they have observed me payimg my library fines for many a year -- but also because they are some of the best "English monarchs as Roman emperors" statues that there are. And they got walk on parts in my Washington DC lectures last year.

Anyway, I soon discovered that the barrier were not there because these things were about to be cleaned (first assumption), but because they were about to be moved out.

No longer will the Georges survey my library fines. They are, I am told, going to the Fitzwilliam Museum.

And I am bloody sad.

A Roman brothel token?

I was hoping to keep out of the story about the "Roman brothel token" found by a metal detectorist near Putney Bridge and now on display at the Museum of London. But I think someone had better give a different version from the torrent of lurid stuff now pouring out about the sex-life of Roman London.

The object in question is a small bronze "coin" -- with a scene of sex on one side and a the Roman numeral XIIII on the other. Assuming that it is genuine (and there are quite a few fakes of these circulating and this one was not actually found in an archaeological context), then it is what archaeologists term a "spintria". This is a Latin word for male prostitute... but it is an entirely modern practice to apply it to these little objects; we haven't got the foggiest clue what the Romans called them... or (despite what you read) what they used them for. Quite a few have been found across the Roman world (there's another on the right).

The favourite idea circulating about this recent discovery is that it was part of the highly developed Roman brothel economy. Perhaps you handed over 14 asses (the coin not the animal, I mean), got the token and then went and redeemed it at one of the local brothels (a bit like a book token). Or maybe the sexual position depicted on the token was what you had paid your 14 asses for (shades here of the tour guides' explanations for the paintings of the different sexual positions depicted on the walls of the brothel at Pompeii ... a kind of visual menu for those who couldnt ask for it in Latin. Errr.. come again?)

Now, as there is no evidence for these things at all, no-one could actually disprove that. But remember that there is no Roman mention of such things, none have been found in any place that has been identified as a "brothel" . . .  and just think of the kind of infrastructure of the ancient "brothel industry" that this kind of internal currency would imply. (Let's face it, most sex for money in the ancient world  -- like now --happened at street corners, under bridges, after closing time at the bar... NOT in designated "brothels" . . . )

So what is a more likely explanation?